


let's keep count; one plus one is three

by kwritten



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Other, Polyamorous Character, film canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 19:38:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1316833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I ended up falling in love with the moon, because it faithfully showed up, night after night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's keep count; one plus one is three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youcallitwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcallitwinter/gifts).



The nights are long.

 

She doesn't remember a time when they weren't. Trades in one obsession for another, but she'll always be the teenager camped out with a camera outside a hotel just waiting for darkness to present itself. She'll always be the one wide awake when the rest of the world pretends to be asleep.

 

(She learned too early on for comfort that darkness is a state of being and the trouble isn't that it makes you blind, but that you can stare right at it for years without knowing.)

 

For Logan, it's 180 days and 120 days and then 45 days, for her it's one day at a time and sometimes he's there and sometimes he's not. (They work better that way, they'll never admit.) For her it's long nights and early mornings and coffee stains on her pants and a camera in her hand. For her 180 days is one night plus one night plus one night... whatever night she is in is the reality of the moment and sure, her calender counts down the days until he returns, but sometimes he pops through the door in his uniform and her heart drops and the phones ring in the background as he teases her about forgetting him and that's not it at all it's just... what is a day?

 

Veronica Mars counts time in nights, not days.

 

At night, Neptune is alive and that is where she breathes easy. When the world is buzzing on it's own malcontent and not on the burning brightness of endless, exacting sun.

 

There is a rhythm to the night that she doesn't have to count out in her head while walking as if she were a clumsy freshman on the dance floor.

 

“onetwothree, onetwothree, onetwothree”

 

She counts the hours by the dull hum of a motorcycle passing on the street below. She counts the nights in cups of coffee. She makes a full pot and sometimes there are two mugs on the coffee table and sometimes one. Sometimes she falls asleep in her chair and Mac wakes her in the morning with a bagel and a smile and there's a joke about goddesses and saviors that are only half lies.

 

Sometimes she rides home legs astride the night with the wind in her hair and a laugh caught in her throat and the smell of leather lingering all around her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time Weevil comes into her office only her desk light is on and there's a bottle of cheap liquor in his hands. She laughs and gets out the good stuff and they sit on the low couch and drink to the past and make horrible jokes about leopards and spots and when she wakes up her head is on his shoulder and she doesn't pull away as quickly as she ought to.

 

 

 

It's one thing to rage a war against Sheriff Lamb two-point-oh, it's quite another to rage it with a motorcycle gang playing the part of your army.

 

Things change the way that they always do. Gang-life stops being about teenagers puffing out their chests and becomes a battalion of men grown on the back of motorcycles willing to put everything away to protect the streets they call home. There's a certain nuanced poetry to the name PCH and she's old enough now to see that the members know that.

 

 

 

 

She counts the hours by the dull hum of a motorcycle passing in the night because he does that now. She doesn't wonder if he always did and she never noticed. She doesn't think back to all the scrapes she's pulled herself out of only to find him smirking at her on the other side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logan likes to throw himself into the fray. Even after all this time, he's still an abused little kid with a death wish lingering on his shoulders. It irritates her because it is familiar.

 

Weevil likes to keep watch until she asks for help. He likes to know that she has to ask, she likes knowing that she always can. It doesn't bother her because it is familiar.

 

They were born for the trenches, made for them, bred to find peace in them. They are two sides of a coin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second time he comes into the office in the dead of night all the lights are on and Mac is shouting instructions from her desk and there's a phone ringing somewhere but she can't imagine where and he tracks sand everywhere he goes. He laughs at them and finds the phone, he answers it like he belongs there.

 

The second time he comes into the office in the dead of night he's carrying a pizza and beers and like an old, indulgent grandpa force-feeds the two women running a P. I. business and regales them with stories of a toddler that make Veronica's chest hurt because there's so much love in his voice when he talks.

 

 

The next morning she hears from an informant that one of the Fitzpatricks put a hit out with her face as the prize. She gets Weevil's guys out of the Sheriff's office easy – on the claim of self-defense of course.

 

They never mention it between them.

 

 

 

 

She tries to pretend that she is safe. She doesn't look over her shoulder when walking into a parking garage in the dead of night. She doesn't hold her keys in her fist like a weapon, she lets them dangle from her fingers like an clinging invitation.

 

She sometimes lets her senses lie to her, lying in bed and pretending that she will slip into pantyhose and defend a hot-shot with her witty words. She laughs at herself because it sounds terrible.

 

 

 

 

The third time he walks into her office in the middle of the night, she's leaning over to turn out the light and is exhausted to tears and actually looking at the calendar on the wall that tells her _one week_ until nights mean curling up in bed with an officer and making lame jokes about the armed forces.

 

There's blood on his knuckles and a bright sheen to his eyes.

 

He holds out his palms and says, “Guess it was never really meant to work out, right?”

 

He doesn't say, _She left._

He doesn't say, _She took the world I was fighting to protect._

He doesn't say, _What will I fight for now._

 

She picks out the bits of brick in his torn flesh and says, “What did that wall ever do to you?”

 

She doesn't say, _I understand_.

She doesn't say, _She'll come back._

She doesn't say, _Leopards can't love gazelles. I know, I've tried._

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes she stares into the ripped and bleeding skin he brings in like an offering to her and she sees a mirror. They clean eachother's wounds now, that's how they count the nights. It starts with one little tear at the corner and then it's all out on the table. She counts the months in exposures and he counts her tears on his hand.

 

She doesn't cry and he has nothing to count.

 

He doesn't expose anything and she has nothing to count.

 

And yet there is a tally of number always on the tips of their tongues, waiting to shout out all the things they know.

 

 

 

 

 

She counts her safety in the dull roar of a motorcycle in the background of her thoughts. It's there on the fringes of her senses always. She nods to it as she stops for coffee. She is always aware of it. For a while it wasn't one it was many, but things change and wives leave and babies are ripped away and now she's the only thing left so it's there in her rear-view mirror and on the street where she lives.

 

Logan sees but doesn't see and he comes and goes without a word. She breathes a sigh in relief and wonders why.

 

She counts her nights in cases and files and intrigue. She counts her days in cups of coffee and emails and phones ringing. Her breathe follows the rhythm of a motor she can't see. There are red marks on the calender by the door. There are two empty mugs on the coffee table.

 

She forgets what she's waiting for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fourth time he comes into her office in the dead of night it isn't the fourth time and she's not sure anymore why she counts. The truth is that he's always there, in the darkness with her. The truth is they keep tabs on each other and he comes in every night to like they are housewives gossiping over frozen yogurt. Only their gossip saves lives and ends lives. Only their conversations are always fraught with blood and disaster.

 

Theirs is a war council.

 

She isn't sure why she counts the moments anymore – but there have to be ones that matter, to stand out against the daily grind. Three losses, one win. That's not what'll keep her going. 180 days, 179, 178, 177 – the numbers are too slow and they become meaningless. She waits until she's not. But she's grown so accustomed to counting. So she counts the moments that matter so that maybe they'll add up to something.

 

 

 

 

The fourth time they fall asleep in her office (because that's really what she was counting the whole time) there's a number on the wall that reads “1” and that's the only significance, really. There isn't anything special about the night at all. Chinese takeout and a couple of beers and a pile of files on the floor.

 

When she wakes up her head is in his lap on the couch and his arm is draped over her waist like it belongs there. When she wakes up Logan's hand is in hers, tangled through Weevil's arm on her stomach and her legs are draped across his like they belong there.

 

When she wakes up he smiles down at her and rubs his thumb over her skin and says, “Morning sleeping beauty.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

And she doesn't say, _I'm sorry_.


End file.
